


a wilderness beyond these walls

by spectrespecs



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sheith can be seen as platonic or romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15154517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectrespecs/pseuds/spectrespecs
Summary: Keith finds a book on desert wildlife and goes adventuring.He finds it in the thrift shop that sits in the center of the nearest town. The store is small but filled to the point it feels like random bits of clothing and used home goods will spill out onto the one-way street outside the front door.Animals of the Southwest Desertby George Olin is wedged between multiple copies of a once popular teen romance series and a set of a chef’s cookbooks. The book catches Keith’s eyes as he trails through the store, simultaneously trying to take in some of that too cold and too artificial air from the air conditioner and trying to find a few more items he thinks would be practical to have out in his desert home. Keith carefully pries the book out from its place on the densely populated shelf and flips through it.





	a wilderness beyond these walls

**Author's Note:**

> **For Desert Keith Week: Day Two - Wildlife**
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful mods running Desert Keith Week! And shoutout to Sunny @kcgane for the support when all I could think of was using a Jurassic Park quote as this title.
> 
> Title from the song "Belong" by Editors.
> 
> Also, the book mentioned is real and can be found on the [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/animalsofsouthwe00olin)!

He finds it in the thrift shop that sits in the center of the nearest town. The store is small but filled to the point it feels like random bits of clothing and used home goods will spill out onto the one-way street outside the front door.  _Animals of the Southwest Desert_ by George Olin is wedged between multiple copies of a once popular teen romance series and a set of a chef’s cookbooks. The book catches Keith’s eyes as he trails through the store, simultaneously trying to take in some of that too cold and too artificial air from the air conditioner and trying to find a few more items he thinks would be practical to have out in his desert home. Keith carefully pries the book out from its place on the densely populated shelf and flips through it.

It’s old. Seeing the year  _1954_ printed on the title page as the publication date feels as foreign a concept to Keith as living in a big city. He understands the desert. Keith tries to not spend too much time contemplating the past because a year ago, ten years ago, and 18 years ago are all times that feel tangible and real but only hold more questions and pain for him. The year of this book is too long ago for it to make Keith feel anything other than intrigued that this relic survived for so long.

Sometime later, Keith walks out of the thrift store with a bag of extra clothes, a new (old) can opener, and  _Animals of the Southwest Desert_ tucked under his arm, and he gently places the book inside the storage compartment of his bright red hoverbike before getting on and blasting back into the desert, leaving a small storm of dust in his wake.

When he’s back at his shack, Keith throws himself down on the couch and runs a hand down the front cover. It’s a colorful but faded drawing of the desert with some kind of hog-like creature grazing among cacti. Keith tries to remember if he’s seen one of these before during one of his and Shiro’s rides out into the desert. The thought makes Keith’s hands curl on the cover and a deep desire to rip off the fragile dust jacket from the book.

Keith closes his eyes and leans his head back, taking a steadying breath before looking back down at the book and cracking it open with the same caution he’s been giving since discovering it, and he starts examining the book’s contents with real intent.

Even though the writing is academic in tone, it grips Keith. It’s a clinical examination of the desert, but there was no scientific area of observation restricting Keith. He has as far as the desert extended to explore and get lost. He had the paths of sandy gravel already blown away by the hoverbike as he sped through them and even more ways still left open to explore. He had the strange pull he felt to the area with the peculiar cave markings. To him, whenever he climbed up on the roof of the shack and looked out into the desert, everything he could see and beyond was his. And even though he felt alone and lost, this book told him he wasn’t alone. There was life teeming out in the canyons, just waiting to be seen.

Keith reads through the book until his eyes become too heavy to continue and the light from his lamp no longer sufficiently illuminates the pages. He makes a decision as he pulls his tired limbs into bed that he’s going to find all the life that the desert has to offer.

*****

_Kit Fox, Vulpes macrotis_

“Heh,” Keith lets out the short sound of amusement and a wry smile reading the passage about the small animal listed in the book. It turns out that the kit fox is a tiny mammal he had seen out before with Shiro. Pulling out a pen, Keith underlines the sentence about when the kit fox can be seen in the desert and closes the book.

Letting his memory guide him, Keith navigates out to where he remembers going with Shiro and seeing the fox. The two had been sharing a thermos of hot tea on a cool spring night, pushing the limits of how late they could get away with rolling back into the Garrison and using Shiro’s status to avoid reprimand. The appearance of the fox had stunned them both to silence until the gentle crush of some rocks under Keith’s boots had perked the creature’s ears and made it run away.

Once he approaches the area that looks like where he first encountered the kit fox, Keith comes to a slow stop and turns off the bike. He needs to watch his surroundings on the ground if he wants a chance to spot the tiny fox again, but Keith has never been one to stop his eyes drifting to the desert night sky. Nights like this, it feels like the shining stars and glinting galaxies are mocking him as they glitter. Winking at him as if they know his pain and how little there is for him to do.

Diverting his gaze back to the solid ground, Keith leans back on the bike and folds his arms, looking out around him for any sign of movement. A gnawing need to see this kit fox has overcome Keith now. He needs some type of sign from a life past; he needs evidence that there’s more out there than him, a shack, and a strange feeling. With the lights of the bike on the dimmest setting, Keith pulls the book back out from the storage compartment along with a pen, and he scribbles some notes in the margins about the first time he saw the animal with Shiro.

Keith becomes so engrossed in trying to preserve the memory with words that don’t feel like enough that he startles when taking a moment to look away from the page and seeing that very desert fox looking at him from a few feet away.

It’s such a small animal, Keith thinks, barely a fourth the size of one of the hoverbike’s jets. It’s small and it’s alone, but it’s surviving out in the desert, just like him.

The fox’s ears are large and sticking straight up, and the eyes on its narrow face are trained on Keith, both wary and mildly curious about this other living being so far out into the wilderness.

Keeping his eyes on the creature, Keith gingerly slides off the bike and lowers himself to a crouch and pulls out a piece of beef jerky he has in a jacket pocket. The book mentioned that a fox the author encountered took food he left out for it during the night, but the story had not specified what type of food. Keith assumed jerky would be somewhat enticing for the creature.

“Here you go,” Keith breathes out in a whisper as he places the offering on the ground an arm’s length away. During this whole maneuver, the kit fox has not moved—it just keeps eyes trained on Keith.

Keith rocks back in his crouch to lean back against the side of his bike and add distance between himself, the jerky, and the fox. Seconds pass and the fox’s ears twitch, making Keith certain the animal will shoot off into the darkness any second now. But, to his surprise, it approaches the food slowly and sniffs the jerky before taking the piece into its mouth and looking back up at Keith.

“Enjoy,” Keith whispers, a small smile cracking out along his face. The fox’s ears twitch again, and this time it does run off with its bounty into the desert night.

The grin doesn’t leave Keith’s face as he pulls out the book again and adds a note to the first page of the fox’s passage, next to its illustration, and writes the date, time, and coordinates where he found the animal, and then he writes out a small entry about the encounter. Keith doesn’t know yet if he’s doing this for himself to pass the time and have proof that his isolation in the desert has some productivity. Maybe he’s doing this to have something to share with someone else. A specific someone else, if ever, and Keith lets out a breath as he looks back up at the sky.

*****

_Peccary, Pecari angulatus_

It turns out that the hog-like creature on the cover was a peccary, and Keith definitely has not come across one before as he had thought. But he wanted to see one.

There’s a tiny map in the book that shows what area of the Arizona desert the animals dwell in, and Keith knows it will be a bit of a ride out for him. It feels worth it, though.

In a corner of his desert home, there’s a closet where he puts things he doesn’t want to think about anymore. Relics of his dad and bits of his Garrison life shoved into a corner gathering dust. Keith goes to the closet to pull out the flannel-patterned cloths he used with Shiro when they decided to go out far into the desert and have something that resembled a picnic. It was always food Shiro charmed from the Garrison’s head of cafeteria services who had the inability to say no to the star pilot. Keith understood. Shiro used to joke that maybe eating the subpar cafeteria food in a better setting than the stark Garrison walls might make it taste better. Somehow out in the open space, the dry sandwiches and overly saturated potato salad would suddenly feel much more flavorful, but Keith always thought it wasn’t just the endless view of rocky terrain and distant cactuses around them that helped.

Today, Keith decides to splurge a little with the extra money he made picking up some odd jobs in the small town. He goes to the cheap and greasy diner at the edge of town to order two cheeseburgers and onion rings as his reward for a day exploring the desert for some peccaries.

He hits forward on the bike and speeds out of the sleepy town, straight into the desert, not bothering to take the streets that turned into dirt paths paved by the cars and trucks that drove out into the wild.

Keith drives and drives, bandana across his face keeping the dust back from his mouth as he pushes further and further south through the desert. He momentarily feels the pull of the caves with the drawings as he passes within their radius and thinks maybe he should go back there again instead of this new animal scavenger hunt he’s created for himself, but this is the distraction he needs today.

Referencing the compass and his map. Keith glides into an easy path towards where the peccaries should be. His thoughts go back to the kit fox from a few days ago and other animals he’s read about while flipping through the book. He’s annoyed  _Animals of the Southwest Desert_ focuses so much on mammals with little to do about reptiles, but maybe he can go through the stores in town again for something that focuses on non-mammalian creatures of the desert. Maybe he’ll try and find the closest library. The plans calm him; the plans give him something to focus on for the future.

After riding fast for almost two hours, Keith pulls over for a break. The sun is high overhead, beating down on him as he leans against some rocky hills, trying to find solace in the shadow they cast. Keith fights the urge to just dump some of his water on himself to cool down, but he needs to be thoughtful with it due to how far out he’s going. He decides to pull out  _Animals of the Southwest Deserts_ again during his break, opening it up right away to page 15 with the entry about peccaries. Tracing the illustration of the creature with a finger, Keith sighs and rereads the passage, realizing he’s been so determined on this animal that he’s memorized parts of it.

_The writer has heard several firsthand stories of javelinas, but too many end with, “He finally got so mean I had to get rid of him,” or “He got so bad with strangers that I sent him to the zoo.”_

Keith underlined the sentence the day before when he read over the passage again. The author described that the animal only became violent when agitated and spooked, then it would panic and act accordingly. It felt familiar. Keith being pushed and pushed when he was in the foster care system that led the social workers to just place him in a home. But then Shiro swooped in. But then Keith had the Garrison and his eyes set on flying. Except he lost it all because he was pushed and pushed until he broke all over again and lashed out. He distractedly brushes his thumb against the knuckles that made contact with Iverson’s eye.

It was enough self reflection for the day, if he could help it, so Keith heads back onto the open desert, no roads to guide him, just the position of the sun, a map, and his compass; it’s just how he likes it.

Once he enters the general area that peccaries are known to inhabit, Keith lucks out and finds a desert wash fairly quickly. Catclaw acacia bushes line the area where a stream would be if heavy rain nearby had been recent. There are a few desert willow trees as well, and Keith parks in the shade of one. The sun is close to dipping behind the horizon, casting a glow of oranges and reds across the already burnt desert. Keith pulls out the book again, taking advantage of the natural light, and writes notes about his trip out in the margins of the peccary entry, hoping he’ll be able to catalog another fauna encounter.

There is something overwhelming about the sight of them. An entire herd of peccaries wanders in through the wash, and it takes Keith by surprise. The book stated that they lived in herds, but it was incredible to see. At least 20 peccaries are loosely gathered in their herd, taking their time to amble through the wash, stopping to nose at the occasional plant. There are a few baby peccaries that keep scampering off into opposing directions and their guardian runs—or trudges at a slightly faster pace—to push them back into line. Keith lets out a small laugh witnessing what is the equivalent of an exasperated parent.

As the herd makes its way through, Keith grabs a few onion rings from his bag and pulls out the book. He leans back against the tail of the hoverbike, chewing thoughtfully as the creatures pass and mentally writes his evening entry.

*****

_Bighorn sheep, Ovis canadensis_

This isn’t how Keith wanted to find the next animal from his book. After several days of cruel, even for the desert, high temperatures, Keith ventured out from his house to stop by the town to ask for any new odd jobs that came up and restock on some supplies that had dwindled low.

With the promise of a furniture assembly job the following morning and some more canned soup and vegetables, Keith sets back into the desert, deciding to take a long, looping way back to his home. Just a few days holed up made him miss the wind caused by driving at high speeds and the full sights of the outdoors.

He’s swooping side to side along a canyon and letting out excited yells when something catches Keith’s eye in the distance. His voice full of joy falls silent as he approaches what is lying on the ground.

It’s dead. That much is apparent as Keith gets closer. It’s a male bighorn sheep, Keith recognizes, and it appears to have either collapsed or simply decided to lay down and die in this spot. There’s no smell of decaying flesh to indicate it had been out here for long, so the passing was recent. Dark brown fur ruffles slightly in the hot desert wind and the large, curling horns on the creature’s head look menacing even in death.

Keith gets on his knees next to the animal, eyes threatening to grow wet, which upsets him because there’s no reason to cry over something so natural as the death of an animal in a harsh environment. No matter how much the animal had adapted to desert life and traveled with its herd, it still was not prepared enough for this moment.

And that strikes Keith. Because he’s out here in the desert by himself. No herd. Just him, his shack, and a bike. He’s adapting as he can. He’s living as he can. But there’s no one there anymore to check up on him. No one to make sure he’s going to follow along and make it through the harsh environment of the world alright because not even all the preparation in the world with top scientists was able to save the one person in his life who did care.

So, Keith sits next to the bighorn sheep, draws his knees up close to his chest and hugs his legs. And he cries. Keith hasn’t allowed himself to shed tears in a while. He cried last on his fourth day out in the desert by himself because that was when he couldn’t keep the dams within closed anymore, so he broke. Today, everything for the past months comes crashing down as he looks at this poor creature who needed someone so recently to just help it along from the heat or help it find water. It just needed help. So, Keith cries, for the sheep, for Shiro, and for himself.

*****

_Mexican Freetail Bat, Tadarida brasiliensis_

Keith spends another day at the caves with the strange markings. He traces over drawings with his gloved hands and tries to make any sense of the story about the Blue Lion. It belatedly occurred to Keith that maybe there was some type of large desert feline named a Blue Lion or it was another name for a mountain lion, and he frantically read through the sections on all the big cats in  _Animals of the Southwest Desert._ He didn’t find any answers in the pages.

He’s making this third and final sweep of the caves for the day, admitting to himself that another chunk of hours spent prowling them did not expose any new secrets or meanings to the drawings. Suddenly, something zips past him as Keith walks towards the mouth of the cave, and Keith automatically goes his knife and whips around, placing a defensive arm up. Squinting into the growing darkness of the cavern as the setting sun outside extinguishes the light that illuminates the entry area, Keith tries to see if he was not alone after all.

Pulling out the flashlight in his belt pack, Keith turns it on and shines the beam into the cave and only sees the same sights he’s become familiar with looking back at him. As he moves the light around, there’s another sound of something going  _whoosh_ past him, which makes Keith take a step back and stumble against a protruding rock and fall backward. Dropping the flashlight in order to catch himself from hitting the ground hard, the light bounces off the cave floor as he lands on the ground, but the light momentarily glows against the cave ceiling, revealing what Keith had not seen before.

Hanging bats line the top of the cave, wings wrapped tightly around their bodies as they sleep. It had been a week since Keith last came to the caves, and it seemed in that time, the creatures had found the area and decided to make it their residence.

Keith did not feel like he should be shining the light on them, but his curiosity was winning right now, so he glided the flashlight along the ceiling of the cave to try and see how much of it was covered with the animals. As far as the light reached, there were bats.

Whether it was because of his light or just the fact that the bats had their fill of slumber, more and more started to wake and fly out of the mouth of the cave, flying past Keith as he stood up from the floor and stared in awe above him.

The frequency of bats waking and flying increased, and Keith had a split second to realize that he was about to be caught in a cloud of zooming bats. He hurried to exit the cave but was not quick enough as he became engulfed in the colony as they all exited the space to go into the darkening desert night.

It felt surreal. Keith stood just outside the cave entry, stars above him slowly blinking into brighter appearance as the full moon shone strikingly and bats flocking around. Keith was just another landform in the way to the bats, essentially. They moved around him, flying up and up into the sky, creating a morphing dark cloud as they twisted and soared. In the middle of all of this, Keith stood, slowly raising his arms up so he could feel the rush of wings fully around him and tilting his head to look up.

The desert air never felt more alive to him than in this moment.

Once the sea of bats dwindles in density, Keith runs for his bike and starts to head back home. Something about the entire encounter loosened a tightness within him, and it makes Keith feel giddy. He can’t stop smiling as he speeds in the direction of the shack. Uncontainable excitement within him threatens to burst as Keith thinks about finding his wildlife book and trying to determine what type of bats those were and writing about the experience. Keith raises himself on the seat of the bike, tips his head back, and starts laughing. It’s a true and deep laugh, one that he hasn’t had in a long time that he can feel deep in his gut. He doesn’t stop laughing until he’s back inside, writing down the feeling of hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny wings beating around him. It’s then that he feels a sudden surge from the caves that makes him jump to look outside the window and see a growing light in the sky.

*****

It’s later, so much later, when Keith is back in the desert home. He’s gained a team, his mother, a space wolf, knowledge of galaxies far beyond his knowledge, and years of growth. Most importantly, he gained Shiro back. And it’s with all of these parts of his life that they sort through the contents of the shack in order to create a makeshift base of operations for Team Voltron on Earth that someone finds the book.

“Hey, what’s this?” Shiro asks, lifting  _Animals of the Southwest Desert_ from where it had been gathering dust underneath the coffee table. Dust specks dance in the air around his head, sunlight making them and Shiro’s white hair glow.

A small smile breaks out on Keith’s face as he approaches the other man and sees what he’s holding. The rest of the team had grown exasperated at all be stuck inside a shack that was too small for so many inhabitants and had chosen to go to the nearby town for a break, and Krolia went with the wolf to reacquaint herself with the outdoors of the region that had too once been her home for a while. This left Keith and Shiro with some rare time alone.

“Let me show you,” Keith replies, taking the book and sitting down on the couch. Shiro sits next to him, much closer than needed as their bodies press together, but Keith doesn’t mind in the slightest.

He carefully flips through the pages and finds the passage about the kit fox and places the book on Shiro’s lap.

“This is your handwriting,” Shiro murmurs, touching the scrawl in the margins with the fingers of his left hand.

“Yeah,” Keith breathes out, leaning into Shiro’s right side, trying to tuck himself into the space and remain a sturdy presence on the side he knows the other man has been feeling self-conscious about.

“We did see one of these together,” Shiro lets out a pleased laugh, remembering the lifetime ago when the two of them saw the fox together. “So, did you become a wilderness explorer while you were out here alone?”

“Something like that,” Keith replies.

The two sit and leaf through the book, reading the notes Keith kept, laughing at Keith’s obsession with peccaries and choking up at how raw the words hastily written next to the bighorn sheep passage feel. Shiro tells Keith he’s glad that Keith had something else to keep him occupied during his time alone in the desert. Keith just feels glad he had the animals, and now he’s got Shiro, even if it’s at the cost of an intergalactic war. But maybe after all of this settles, he’ll have Shiro and some animals left in the book to seek out and write about.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on [tumblr](http://exitlude.tumblr.com/)


End file.
